This blog has now closed. Please visit my new blog, Stepreo.

Archive: indycar

Marco Simoncelli

23 October 2011 14:17

Categories: Motorsport

It is awful that, less than a week after the death of Dan Wheldon, another major motorsport star has been killed during a race.

Unlike IndyCar, I follow MotoGP quite closely and I have watched all of the races this year. I was a big fan of Marco Simoncelli. For me, Marco Simoncelli was the clear stand-out rider in a MotoGP series that is not as exciting as it once was.

Simoncelli had his critics. Some thought he was too aggressive. It is perhaps true that sometimes he stepped beyond the line. But he was still young. As this year progressed he was beginning to become a more measured rider — and he was no less exciting for it.

Simoncelli has single-handedly saved a few dull MotoGP races by actually doing extraordinary, exciting things. His talent was clear for all to see, and I personally thought he would become a World Champion in the future.

Sadly the journey came to an end today. What is especially sad is that in the lap or so up to his fatal accident, he was demonstrating exactly what made him such a wonderful spectacle in a brilliant ding-dong battle with Alvaro Bautista.

Thoughts must also go out to Colin Edwards and Valentino Rossi, who collided with Marco Simoncelli. It must be an unimaginably awful experience.

It is always a hair-raising experience watching motorcycles race. It is clearly an especially dangerous form of motorsport. As we see time and again, when control is lost, a bike can go anywhere. Worse still, a rider can go anywhere too. It is always a heart-stopping moment when a rider goes down in the middle of the circuit as opposed to a run-off area.

The skill and bravery of motorcycle racers is one of the things that makes it such a draw. But today, there was another reminder that the quest for more safety can never stop.

Thanks for entertaining us, Marco Simoncelli.

4 comments

Dan Wheldon

17 October 2011 12:03

Categories: Motorsport

I was very shocked and upset to learn about the death of Dan Wheldon.

I don’t watch IndyCar for a variety of reasons. Chief among them is the fact that I don’t have Sky. If I did have Sky, I probably would watch, and I certainly keep up-to-date with the news from IndyCar in general.

Nothing qualifies me to say anything about Dan Wheldon, as I have never watched him race. But I was fully aware of what he achieved in IndyCar. With 16 IndyCar race victories — two of which were the Indianapolis 500, arguably the most prestigious race in the world — and an IndyCar championship under his belt, it is clear that Dan Wheldon was a class act.

It is difficult to escape the impression that IndyCar is a particularly dangerous category in motorsport. There are some horrendous incidents in IndyCar with high-speed cars, narrow oval circuits and inexperienced drivers. All of these are currently being pinpointed as contributory factors towards Dan Wheldon’s death.

But it would be naive to imagine that accidents like this won’t happen in any form of motorsport. I don’t know how it would affect me if I were to watch a fatal accident unfold before my eyes live on television. It has never happened before to me. With drivers and riders that I know of and follow, in categories that I enjoy, it is difficult enough just to hear the news from a secondary source.

As fans of motorsport, we sit down to watch a race in anticipation of being entertained. Usually it delivers. But instead, it sometimes presents this.

I have heard it said that one reason we love motorsport is because it can cover the full spectrum of human emotions. If only that wasn’t true.

3 comments

Is there a market for B-class open-wheel series?

13 October 2011 17:00

Categories: *, Motorsport, Sport

Today it was announced that the Asian rounds of Superleague Formula have been cancelled. This is on top of the earlier cancellation of the South American rounds. The original 2011 calendar also contained races in Russia, the middle east, Australia and New Zealand. None of these took place.

In the end, the only two races that took place were at Assen in the Netherlands and Zolder in Belgium. This means that the championship was decided way back in July — but we only learned that today!

It was already quite an effort for those two races to take place anyway. Superleague had seemed worryingly dormant over the winter, and many suspected that it was dead.

Following in the footsteps of A1GP

The parallels between Superleague and A1GP (another failed attempt at an ‘F1 alternative’) have always been striking. Both have core concepts that are slightly alien to motorsport.

A1GP described itself as the “World Cup of Motorsport”. Drivers didn’t win races. Teams didn’t even win races. Nations did.

Meanwhile, Superleague was designed as a cross between football and motor racing. Drivers didn’t win races. Teams didn’t win races. Football clubs did. Any football fans I ever spoke to about Superleague were not very interested in the series. For this reason, the format was always going to be a loser.

But on the plus side for both A1GP and Superleague, they both provided some quite entertaining racing. And it is on this basis that they both attracted a cult following — a small but loyal fanbase. But this clearly isn’t enough of a fanbase to sustain a series for more than a few years.

A1GP lasted for four years. Cunningly, the series was run over the winter. Not very traditional for a motorsport series, but this meant that they could draw in motorsport fans suffering from withdrawal symptoms. It was moderately successful, and it led to GP2 (the closest thing there is to an official feeder series to F1) creating a spin-off GP2 Asia series that was run in winter. (GP2 Asia has since also been wound up, having had a troubled 2010–2011 season of its own when it was affected by the unrest in Bahrain.)

Not a super formula

When A1GP closed down, Superleague opened up and has so far continued for three seasons. Superleague runs with the same type of car, with the same type of drivers on the same types of circuits. For want of a better phrase, these are a B-class car, with B-class drivers on largely B-class circuits.

I have nothing against this personally, and I personally enjoyed watching A1GP and Superleague whenever I got the chance. But you have to question whether it is a formula for success in terms of bringing in an audience.

Sad but true: the standard isn’t high enough

There are lots of brilliant series below Formula 1 that provide real appeal. It is a sad fact that the motor racing world revolves around Formula 1, and the most successful sub-F1 open-wheel series are all about finding the F1 stars of the future. GP2, World Series by Renault, GP3 and the many Formula 3 series all stake their claim as being a testing ground for the stars of the future.

But series like A1GP and Superleague Formula cannot make this claim. As a result, their appeal is sadly limited. A series like Superleague is populated by drivers who aren’t good enough to progress further up the ladder. Some drivers almost made it to F1, but didn’t quite have the last bit that was required. If you’re lucky, there might be the odd ex-F1 driver like Jos Verstappen. But the world isn’t exactly set alight by the prospect of a battle between Neel Jani and Craig Dolby.

It is true that A1GP has been a stomping ground for a few future F1 drivers like Nico Hülkenberg. But these drivers had to make their way through GP2 aftewards to get to F1.

Because let’s be fair here. It is generous to describe the drivers in Superleague as ‘B-class’. B-class open-wheel racers can be found in IndyCar. IndyCar struggles enough to survive as it is. But at least some of its drivers are household names like Dario Franchitti or Takuma Sato. Jobbing open-wheelers whose sights haven’t extended to IndyCar end up in a series like Superleague.

While I have always found the concept of Superleague Formula to be shaky, I do hope that it is able to survive this embarrassing season and come back stronger in 2012. But I sadly doubt it will be the case.

8 comments

Forza Felipe

27 July 2009 19:44

Categories: News, Opinion

I will review the Hungarian Grand Prix soon, but I have a couple of other articles I need to get out of the way first. I didn’t want to do any of that before mentioning Felipe Massa.

It goes without saying that I deeply hope that Felipe Massa makes a full recovery, and that it won’t be too long before he is racing again.

I was shaking during qualifying as news of what had happened to Massa had emerged. I don’t think I have ever felt that bad in all the time I have been watching Formula 1 since 1995, although Robert Kubica’s accident at Montreal in 2007 came close to that feeling.

I said last week following the death of Henry Surtees that the greatest risk that faces racing drivers is not having a heavy impact with a wall, but being hit by a wheel. This week we must extend that to debris in general. The spring that fell off Rubens Barrichello’s car is said to have weighed around a kilogram, not the sort of thing you want to be approaching at upwards of 160mph. Meanwhile, his car’s heavy impact with the tyre barrier does not appear to have caused or exacerbated any serious injury.

Martin Brundle has rightly pointed out that the term “freak accident” is inappropriate in motorsport. When you are travelling at speeds regularly approaching 200mph, there is only so much you can ever do to make it safe.

But there is no doubting that Felipe Massa was extraordinarily unlucky. The part that failed on the Brawn had never failed before. The spring then bounced around for four seconds, before just happening to be in exactly the right position to hit Massa’s helmet. You couldn’t aim it like that if you tried. Had Massa arrived a second earlier or later, or been a few inches further to the right, we probably would never have known about the spring flying around on the track.

That this should have happened just six days after the death of Henry Surtees adds further to the sense of tragedy. When you have one tragic accident it might be easy to dismiss it as a freak one-off, but to have two similar incidents in close succession rings alarm bells. Rubens Barrichello has compared this week to Imola 1994.

There will be a renewed look at safety, which I sense has taken a back seat since cost cutting became the more fashionable cause. Many are asking, is it time for Formula 1 to consider closed cockpits? The debate has been started by Ross Brawn, F1 Fanatic and Checkpoint 10. But there are no easy answers. This weekend during an IndyCar race we saw a perfect demonstration of the extra dangers that a closed cockpit may create, when Tony Kanaan’s car caught fire following a refuelling problem.

Going back to Felipe Massa, ever since the second he hit the tyre barrier the reports that have come out have been conflicting and confusing. Thankfully, the latest news appears to be positive. Let us hope that Massa will make a full and speedy recovery.

Forza Felipe.

4 comments

Are FOTA off their rocker?

2 October 2008 18:50

Categories: Opinion

I was originally quite pleased when I heard earlier this year that the Formula 1 teams had finally decided to put their differences aside and join together as the Formula One Teams Association. At last, someone with teeth who can stand up the Max Mosley and the FIA.

That’s all well and good if FOTA turns out to be half-decent and come up with good solutions. Unfortunately, the signs are now that the teams’ ideas for the future of Formula 1 are every bit as barmy as Mad Max’s.

Take a paragraph buried in Pitpass’s story on Luca di Montezemolo’s whines about the Singapore Grand Prix earlier this week. As it happens, I kind of agree with most of what di Montezemolo had to say, although that is for a different post. But as though the shock of agreeing with the execrable Ferrari President (who also happens to be President of FOTA) wasn’t enough, what Pitpass revealed about FOTA’s early ideas literally left me open-mouthed in shock and disillusionment.

We hear that at last week’s meeting a number of issues which could result in a seismic change to the sport were discussed, including standard transmissions, standard wheels, standard brakes and standard rear wings.

We hear there may even be a vote on whether F1 should have a weight handicap system!

Excuse me for swearing, but what the very fuck?! What is this pish? Standard transmissions, wheels, brakes and even aero? Why not go the whole hog and throw in standard drivers as well? We might as well pay to watch a glorified Scalextric race.

This is beginning to look like a complete stitch-up. I know the teams desperately want to cut costs, but this is just extreme. With practically spec cars, the only competition left in F1 will be over who has the biggest motorhome and the best catering.

Lest the powers-that-be forget, Formula 1 is supposed to be all about watching the best drivers in the best cars, and that means teams constantly innovating in as many areas as possible. F1 is supposed to be about technological excellence. FOTA’s plan sounds like a watered-down European version of IndyCar — and there is a reason why so few people watch those lorries tootling round the place.

If you want to watch a spec series, you can take your pick. There is GP2, A1GP (if they can ever get round to actually building the blasted cars), World Series by Renault and now even Max Mosley’s sorry Formula Two scheme. That is not to mention the literally countless spec series that operate lower down the chain.

If even Formula 1 becomes a spec series with standard this, that and the other, what is left? Please. We have to have at least one motor racing category that is dedicated to technological advancement. The world is already over-populated with spec series that there would simply be no point in F1 transforming into one.

I haven’t even gone into the weight handicap system. Needless to say, this would be a total disaster for F1. We want to see the best drivers and the best cars win. That is what sport is supposed to be about. Why should people be punished for being fast? What a load of nonsense. Remember, BTCC’s figures went off a cliff when they introduced their ludicrous ballast system. Why do they think we want to see fast cars going slowly? Keith skewers weight handicap systems here as well.

Meanwhile, Martin Whitmarsh has unveiled FOTA’s big plan for spicing up the Grand Prix weekend. But it doesn’t sound very spicy to me. Apparently, the biggest problem with Formula 1 is Fridays! Silly me for not noticing! And what is the great thing that is going to solve this ill? A mickey mouse time trial with a cash prize!

WTF?! First of all, Fridays are the one bit of F1 that are more-or-less perfect if you ask me. They are called practice sessions, I get to watch the cars practicing. For me, that is a win. There is a certain pleasure to be derived from watching F1 cars do their thing at high speed but without necessarily competing with one another.

Why does this — of all aspects of the F1 weekend — need to be tampered with? Why does there need to be competitive action on a Friday? As far as I’m concerned, Friday is for practicing. Competitive action is for a Sunday.

Don’t forget that no-one will watch anything if it happens on a Friday. People are at work. They’re doing other things. Remember the doomed experiment with spreading qualifying over two days. That was pretty hastily dropped because they realised that no-one could be bothered watching the Sunday morning session — and that was a Sunday, never mind a Friday!

As for having a cash prize, I mean please. This isn’t a game show — it’s Formula 1. Besides, do they really think fans will be that bothered to watch mega-rich drivers getting even richer? No thanks.

See more on this from Clive at F1 Insight, with whom I totally agree on this.

I think I preferred the chaos and deadlock of old over these hare-brained schemes of FOTA.

3 comments